


Five Aprils

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Boyfriends, Boys In Love, First Love, Larry Stylinson Is Real, M/M, Roommates, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:34:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25182583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Harry and Louis find each other but struggle to find themselves over the course of their five years in One Direction.This short story is based on Harry, Louis, and the band in real life, but I also made up a lot of elements i.e. song lyrics, the band's origin and breakup, and a character named Anna.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Kudos: 9





	Five Aprils

One 

It was dumb, but Harry loved the way Louis imitated animals in the street. They’d pass a pigeon, and Louis would fold his elbows back and peck at seeds on the pavement. They’d see a squirrel, and Louis would wrap his limbs around a tree. This infuriated the other boys, but Harry would just laugh. The more Harry laughed, the wilder Louis got. The wilder Louis got, the more Harry laughed. The two of them spiraled endlessly around each other, until all their edges were blurred. 

The days they were allowed out were rare then, but not as rare as they would soon become. Their managers were worried about crowds, but the boys promised to wear sunglasses and keep their voices down. They were local celebrities—a new boy band that played at bars before eleven and sometimes bat mitzvahs if the money was good. Girls knew their names and asked for pictures. It was fun and a little scary. 

“Harry’s dying to be recognized,” said Louis, still brushing tree bark off the front of his t-shirt. Liam’s eyes darted towards Harry.

“We’re almost to the park,” Harry said, throwing out his arms, but Liam elbowed him in the ribs. “Jesus, fine.”

Harry put the glasses back on, and the world dimmed a few notches. It wasn’t that he wanted to be recognized. He just hated the feeling of seeing through lenses. It was cloudy outside, and the sunglasses swallowed even more of the dying light. Harry worried he would miss something. Louis laughed, and Harry noticed that his eyes had gone from pale blue to indigo. He felt like a still-wrapped gift had been stolen from him. 

Out of habit, the five of them walked in a line, taking up the entire sidewalk and most of the bike lane. Zayn kept peering in store windows, and Harry couldn’t tell if he was shopping or studying his own reflection. Niall was humming to himself, something he did almost constantly. He never repeated a melody. Liam had his head on a swivel. He’d designated himself their leader and took the job too seriously. Even when they were just playing football, Liam divided the teams, Liam called the penalties, Liam decided when it was time to call it quits. 

“Girls, twelve o’clock,” he said now. Niall turned to look behind them, and Zayn smacked him on the back of the head. “ _Twelve o’clock_ ,” Liam repeated. A group of girls was clustered on the street corner, their legs bare on a rainy day in April, their denim skirts frayed at the hems. 

“Could we get a photo?” one of them asked when the two groups collided in front of a drugstore. A smirk had crept across Niall’s mouth. Zayn was gazing at an Easter display in the window. Without thinking, Harry took a step toward Louis, who draped an arm around Harry. They leaned into one another, suddenly unmovable. 

“Sure, but be quick,” said Liam before lowering his voice to a whisper. “We don’t want to cause a scene.” All the girls nodded gravely, as though they’d just been let in on a black market conspiracy. A boy around their age was passing on a bicycle, and one of the girls flagged him down, passing him her phone with the kind of trust that only youth can foster. 

“Say cheese,” he said flatly, once they’d all crowded together. Instead of handing the phone back to one of the girls, he handed it to Louis, shoving the thing against his chest. “Don’t worry, fairy. You look fabulous,” the kid whispered before getting back on his bike and pedaling away. 

Harry was the only other person who’d heard, and his chest felt heavy with the words that hadn’t even been directed at him. The girls were already all over Niall, Liam, and Zayn. They wanted them to sign their body parts and sing for them right there on the street corner. Louis watched the scene as if through a screen door, his eyes staring blankly ahead, his arms hanging loose at his sides. There was a pond in the park nearby, and a duck waddled past. Harry pointed to it, but Louis didn’t bother to turn. Harry watched Louis, until finally the weight in his chest grew unbearable. He reached his hand up to Louis’s shoulder and rested it there. It was a friendly gesture, one he’d made dozens of times in the past six months they’d known each other, but, this time, Louis pulled away. 

“Don’t touch me,” he whispered, more words that only Harry could hear, more words for him to carry in his tightening chest. 

Two 

“It’s just us on a beach,” said Niall, his head tilted to the side. 

“Exactly.” Liam’s arms were folded. He’d gotten taller between seventeen and eighteen, but Harry was still the tallest. He knew this bothered Liam, and it brought Harry great comfort that they could still worry about small, boyish things. 

It was unusually cold for April. Louis was wrapped in a blanket and had draped himself across Harry’s back. Harry tried not to move for fear that Louis would change his mind and drape himself elsewhere. All five of the boys were crowded beneath a tent in front of a TV screen the size of a cereal box. 

They’d just finished shooting their first music video, though it hadn’t felt like they’d done any real work. Cameras had followed them around while they played football in the sand and swam in the ocean in their jeans. When a man in a baseball cap yelled “ _That’s a wrap_ ” Zayn had laughed, but the guy wasn’t kidding. That was all that was being asked of them. 

In three days, the video had a million views. By the following month, it had two-hundred million, and the band was booked for an international tour. Louis and Harry celebrated by buying a flat in London. It was Louis’s idea. Together, they’d be bandmates, flatmates, and, somehow, adults. 

Their first kiss was in front of the stove. Louis asked Harry to taste a piece of pasta to see if it was he was the way he liked it—still firm, but not break-your-teeth firm. It was already too soft, but Harry didn’t say anything, just as he hadn’t said anything when Louis came home from the corner store with penne instead of rigatoni. It was all pasta. It was all made by Louis. 

They were seventeen and nineteen and fiercely pretending to be grownups because the world insisted on calling them boys. The flat was too cheap for how much money sat in their new bank accounts, but they weren’t used to frivolous spending. Harry liked to sit on the rusted fire escape and look out at the city. Louis liked small spaces. He’d grown up sharing a bedroom with three sisters. High ceilings and empty carpeting made him dizzy. It was the first flat they’d looked at and the easiest decision they ever made together. 

Harry tried the pasta, nodded, and then kissed Louis. He kissed Louis like it was something he did all the time—with a hand resting on the small of Louis’s back and a slight smile on his lips. He only lingered for a moment before pulling away. “It’s good,” Harry had said. Then, he opened the fridge and pulled out a bagged salad, checked the expiration date, and dumped the wilted lettuce in a bowl. Louis figured he had imagined the whole thing. He reached for a colander. It would be another week before they kissed again, a month before they took each other’s clothes off with shy wonder in the back of an empty tour bus. 

Three

They were in Japan when Zayn walked in on them. It was April, and the tour was almost over. Each boy had their own hotel room, but Zayn’s blowdryer wasn’t working and he had found himself living a peculiar life in which he needed a working blowdryer in order to be seen by the world, so he dragged himself in a cloud of self-loathing to Harry’s room. When Harry didn’t answer after the first knock, Zayn pushed against the door. It swung open. 

Louis’s eyes were closed and everything was okay. Everything, in fact, was bright and warm and golden. Harry’s curls were brushing against the inside of his thighs, and Louis’s fingers were tangled in Harry’s curls, and the two of them were one spiral circling inward and outward and inward. There was no Harry, and there was no Louis. There was only one sweating, gasping, glowing being laid out on the velvet bedspread. 

Then, Louis opened his eyes, and everything was broken. 

Zayn didn’t say anything, so much as a high pitched squeak escaped his lips. Then he slammed the door like he’d seen a ghost, and Louis heard fast footsteps down the hallway. He got up and put on a shirt. 

“Where the hell are my pants?” Louis said into the crack between the bed and the wall. 

“Louis,” said Harry. 

“I can’t find my pants.” He got down on his stomach to check under the bed. 

“Listen to me.” Harry put a hand on his shoulder, but Louis brushed it away as he stood up. 

“I just need-” Louis said before sinking back down on his knees. Harry was there to catch him in a tangle of scrawny elbows and pale skin. “I just need,” Louis repeated. 

“I know,” Harry whispered. “It’ll be okay.” Louis was crying. Had he ever cried in front of Harry? When was the last time he’d cried? It was all coming out and he couldn’t stop it. Why couldn’t he stop it? “I know,” Harry kept saying. He was stroking Louis’s hair over and over from the crown of his head to the back of his neck. Louis’s ribs were on Harry’s thighs. Harry’s elbow rested against Louis’s spine. A thought jolted Louis in the gut: _Memorize this_. 

“I know,” Harry said again, as a flurry of footsteps slowed to a stop outside their door. 

Four

Louis’s girlfriend was in the audience. Harry knew exactly where she was—front row, mezzanine, beneath a chandelier that looked like a fat peacock. Louis kept glancing up at her. Harry just had to follow his gaze. It wasn’t difficult to spot her. She was sitting, when everyone else was standing. Her lips were pressed together, while everyone else was screaming. They never stopped screaming. Harry heard the screaming after he turned off the light and put his head on the pillow and shut his eyes. Screaming. The first time it happened, he thought something was wrong. Maybe someone had been shot or maybe he’s forgotten to put his jeans on, but no. They were screaming blood murder for him. For them. 

The five of them formed something that kept oscillating between band and brotherhood. At the moment, it was a band. They were doing their jobs and nothing more. Liam was hungover. Zayn had been crying. Niall was fine, but he was always fine. Louis’s girlfriend was there. Harry was keenly aware that Louis’s girlfriend was there. 

Her name was Anastasia but she went by Anna. Harry liked that she recognized the ridiculous snobbery of her own name. It showed self-awareness. She also just looked like an Anna—skinny and freckled with a kind face. She’d helped pick out the throw pillows in Harry and Louis’s flat. Every time she visited, she rearranged them on the couch, never satisfied with the way they were ordered. 

At first, Louis called it “an arranged marriage” as a joke. A manager had set them up in October. _Go out to dinner, let them take a few pictures. If you like her, great. If not, that’s fine._ Louis hadn’t wanted to go on a second date, but they needed more pictures, just to be sure. And so it went on and on and on, until Anna became part of Louis’s routine, like brushing his teeth and calling his mum on Sunday evenings. He still lived with Harry, but things were different between them after Japan. Harry and Louis were a liability—if they slipped up, it would hurt the whole band. Whenever they touched each other, it was heavy. When they made love, Louis’s eyes flicked toward the curtains every few breaths. When Louis touched him beneath tables, Harry flinched like he’d been burned. 

Anna was safer. By April, like with most arranged marriages, Louis learned to love her. Harry watched as the two of them cooked pasta in the flat kitchen and went out to movies with sunglasses on, in the hopes of avoiding the paparazzi, who always found them anyway. They pretended until it was real, until Harry couldn’t quite call to mind the feel of Louis’s bottom lip, and Louis no longer stole glances while Harry sang lyrics about young love. 

Now Anna was sitting in the mezzanine, smiling faintly as another song ended. She didn’t seem phased by the screaming. It wasn’t new to her, but it also hadn’t been drilled into her skull for four years. Liam was telling the crowd a joke while the stagehands brought out stools. Harry, wanting something to do with his hands, picked up two at once and set them in the semi-circle. Louis and Harry sat at opposite ends with Liam, Niall, and Zayn in the middle. They all faced out, as they had been instructed to do since their first concert. _The girls pay to see your faces_. Harry was supposed to be the handsome one, the one all the girls liked the best. He was suddenly aware of a pimple in the center of his forehead. Someone had covered it up with beige slop, but he’d wiped it off with his thumb almost immediately, then wiped his thumb on his jeans. There was a streak mark on his thigh now, light against dark. 

Harry had never liked the song before. It was full of clichés and major chords. Niall, the only one who played guitar, always slowed down the tempo too much, so it dragged on for four minutes that should’ve been three. This time, though, the screaming dulled when Niall began to play. It was still there, but it was more of a rainstorm than a hurricane. Harry found himself able to think. Tentatively, his consciousness emerged from its cave and looked around, feeling whispers of sunlight on its back. For the first time that evening, and perhaps for the first time in weeks, he allowed himself to really look at Louis. 

He needed a haircut. Harry had an urge to smooth down the tufts that stood up around Louis’s ears and at the crown of his head. Louis was always changing his hair. He would slick it back one day, part it on the side another, or ruffle it wild how he had that night. Harry liked it best when it was short and smooth like it had been when they’d met, but Louis never wore it like that anymore. His eyes had stayed the same—so blue it hurt and framed by the kind of lashes that made men insecure about themselves. _I look like the next Covergirl_ , he used to say, pulling at them in the bathroom mirror. Harry loved those eyelashes. His posture was better than usual, maybe because Anna was there, but he was still so small. They sometimes made him stand on a box for photoshoots. Harry liked Louis better from up high. He was the oldest in the group, and it felt wrong to look down on him. On their stools, at least, they were all the same height. Louis sat with his heels together and his knees open. He watched Niall play with a tiny smile on his face. When his solo approached, his expression hardened. His jaw tightened. His eyebrows lowered. Louis. 

It was a love song. Harry knew this. They’d put “She is My Soul” on the album in the hopes that it would outlive them. Couples would use it for their first dance. Prom kings and queens would sway to it. Every generic lyric was another dose of immortality. Harry wasn’t interested in immortality. He considered this in the lines leading up to his own solo. He didn’t want to live forever. He just wanted to live now. 

Harry sang a verse and a chorus to Louis. He did not sing in Louis’s general direction, nor did he just glance toward Louis for poignant lines. He serenaded Louis without breaking eye contact, leaving the audience with nothing to look at but his profile, and pouring his every word into Louis and Louis and Louis. And when the final line of the song came around, with his gaze still squared on Louis from across the semi-circle, Harry brought his mouth closer to his microphone and sang, “ _He is my love. He is my life. He is my soul_ ” 

The screaming ceased. 

Five 

Their wedding colors were coral and gold. They’d found china sets in coral and white, pink and gold, and—most infuriatingly—salmon and shimmering yellow. Anna brushed them all aside. They were having the china custom made by an artist in Brooklyn who refused to deliver and was only available from ten to noon on Sundays. It was a nice day in April, so he’d walked from the subway instead of taking a cab. He wished he’d worn something lighter as he rolled up the sleeves of his grey hoodie. A young girl took a picture of him as he waited to cross the street. He waved at her, but she was already staring back down at her phone, admiring the eternal memory she’d captured with the touch of a button. In a way, it felt good that people still cared. At the same time, it was a painful reminder that his face represented something that used to exist, that to look at it was to remember, not to see. The girl walked away without looking up again. Louis slowed his pace until she turned a corner and was gone. 

Louis always worried that such people would be mad at him, that they would somehow know. But the reality was that no one knew—no one except Harry. Three months earlier, it was Harry who’d said it was time to “take a break,” though they all knew those words meant the end of it. But it was Louis who’d asked him to say it. 

“I can’t do it anymore.” The two of them were in their flat, Louis on the couch and Harry lying on the carpet, staring up at a water stain on the ceiling. The others made fun of them for keeping it. Niall had a mansion in Dublin. Liam lived in a penthouse in New York. _You’re millionaires now. You’re megastars_. But Harry and Louis needed that tether. They didn’t talk about it, but they both knew they needed it. 

“Is it all the screaming?” asked Harry. He was massaging his own forehead. His voice was deeper when he was lying down, his chest somehow holding more hollow resonance that way. Louis wanted him to sit up, but he didn’t say it. 

“It’s Anna,” Louis said after a moment. Harry dropped his fingertips to the carpet and raised an eyebrow. Louis sighed. “And it’s _you_. It’s being around you when I’m supposed to love her.” 

Harry finally sat up. He’d let his hair grow long, and it fell from a corona to a waterfall in an instant. 

“You’re _supposed_ to love her? What does that mean?” Louis was silent. “No one can tell you who to love, Louis. Sooner or later, you just have to decide what you want. You have to stop waiting for someone to give you permission to be happy.” Sitting up, Harry’s voice was softer, but the tone was still rich. Louis had to stop himself from closing his eyes. He tried to listen to the words without letting them hurt so much. Harry waited for Louis to look at him. When their eyes were level, he spoke. “I’m not going to tell you what to do.” 

“Anna and I are getting engaged,” said Louis. He cleared his throat and looked away. “I’m getting married, and I think it’s time to put the band to rest. It’s been five years.” 

The look on Harry’s face broke something in Louis. Even after he thought every piece of glass in that part of his soul had already shattered, something that had been whole shattered anew. 

“Okay,” said Harry, his voice dropping even lower. “I’ll tell the boys.” They still called themselves boys, even with their beards and complicated taxes and tired eyes. _I’ll tell the boys_. And he had. 

Louis should’ve taken a cab, but he was still new to New York and still so afraid of doing something idiotic like hailing a police car instead of a taxi or hitting a cyclist in the face with an outstretched hand. He got to the artist’s place at two minutes past noon. A woman in overalls with a scarf in her hair was sitting on the front stoop. The box beside her was larger than her entire person. She didn’t respond when Louis apologized for being late. She only thrust the box into his arms, slung a purse over her shoulder, and strode away down the sidewalk. Louis stopped himself from peering inside the box at the china, revealing to the world that he cared about such things. If it was wrong, they’d fix it later. 

While he was trying to hail a cab with one hand and balance the box with the other, Louis saw a crowd of men with cameras jogging toward the street corner where he stood. For a moment, he thought they were there to photograph him. The girl had tweeted the picture, and now gossip magazines wanted a photo of Louis carrying out wedding preparations in Brooklyn. They’d ask questions about where Anna was. Louis’s mind raced. The truth was that she’d just wanted to sleep in, but maybe they wouldn’t buy that. Maybe he should tell them she had a cold or was visiting her mother in LA. But then it occurred to him that he wasn’t in a boy band anymore, that gossip magazines didn’t care that he was getting married, that his name was only relevant when sandwiched between ands. The cameras were there for someone else. He couldn’t help but strain his neck to see over their heads and make out the object of the flashes. 

Louis felt small. He couldn’t figure out why at first, until he noticed that Harry looked much taller. He had always been tall, but was it possible that he’d grown? Louis glanced down at Harry’s feet, clad it heeled leather boots. That was it. But the boots were only the beginning. Harry was wearing a pale pink suit, complete with high-waisted pants and a jacket that flared at the sleeves. His nails were painted in alternating shades of teal and purple. He’d cut his hair recently and it was short and neat, though a few curls had escaped from behind his ears. His eyes were the same—so green it hurt, or maybe that feeling was just the china, heavy against Louis’s forearms. 

Beside Harry was a man Louis had never seen before. He was shorter than Harry, but muscular. The top three buttons of his linen shirt were undone to reveal a bronze chest. He had a kind face. This eased the sudden aching in Louis’s chest slightly. He had a kind face. His fingers were interlaced with Harry’s. They leaned into each other and smiled as they strode past the cameras, well aware of their immortality, but uninterested in it all the same. 

Louis’s arms were beginning to tremble with the weight of the box. Harry laughed at something the man said, and his whole body shook with the joy of it. He turned to the side and one of his dimples appeared. Louis tightened his grip against the stiff cardboard. He watched the two of them until they disappeared into a shop, Harry’s laugh melting into a smile, their hands still interlaced. Louis’s hands were too slick to hold on anymore. The box began to slip. 

He let it fall. 


End file.
